56 Famous Quotes by Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie is a Native American author and poet who is best known for his book "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven." His work explores themes of identity, race, and cultural conflict, and he has become a leading voice in the Native American literary tradition. Alexie's writing is marked by a sense of humor and a keen insight into the human condition, and his work has helped to raise awareness about the struggles and triumphs of Native Americans in the modern world. His legacy as a writer and advocate for social justice continues to inspire readers and writers around the world. (Sherman Alexie Biography).
Sherman Alexie Famous Quotes
1. "Don't live up to your stereotypes." (Meaning)
2. "The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet."
3. "Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming."
4. "We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization."
5. "I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there."
6. "In a real-world way, my gifts are very limited in terms of what I can do."
7. "I don't know what any individual should do about crossing her own borders. I only know that I live a happier, more adventurous life, by crossing borders."
8. "Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations."
9. "When you construct a mix tape, the first song you come out with has to be a barnburner."
10. "I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots."
11. "But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic."
12. "Spiritual matters should be private."
13. "I'm a method writer. In order to write about the emotion, I have to experience it. I get physically tired and exhausted, devoting hours and hours and hours to it."
14. "If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time."
15. "The dream he needed most was the dream that frightened him more." (Meaning)
16. "The problem is that too many adults think their kids' lives are simple, or they try to make their lives simple, when their emotional lives are just as complicated as ours. They might have a few less tools to deal with it because they're young, but the emotions are all the same, and the subject matter is all the same."
17. "I think that white women are more apt to read laterally. So I think there's some strong identification for women, and their political and social positions, and minorities. I think that the political power of, let's say, the average Indian man and a white woman are pretty equal."
18. "You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture."
19. "When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author."
20. "I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture."
21. "My career means, if you're a non-Indian writing about Indians, at least there's one Indian in your rearview mirror."
22. "You want the good life? You live where white people live, you go to school where white people go to school, and you shop where white people shop."
23. "I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture."
24. "My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures."
25. "Writing is a lonely business."
26. "All I owe the world is my art."
27. "You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it."
28. "In the middle of the night, when you're ambiguously ethnic, like me, when you're brown, beige, mauve, siena, one of those lighter browns in the Crayola box. You have to be careful of the cops and robbers, because nobody's quite sure what you are, but everybody has assumptions."
29. "I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants."
30. "All art is exploitation."
31. "I thought I'd been condescended to as an Indian - that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing young adult literature."
32. "The people who loved me when I was seven years old love my books, and the people who didn't like me when I was seven years old don't like my books."
33. "I was a controversial figure on my reservation when I was a kid. I was mouthy and opinionated and arrogant. Nothing has changed."
34. "My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room."
35. "I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to be another disappointing Indian."
36. "My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me - not so much the positive stuff, but the damage."
37. "My name is Sherman J. Alexie Jr., and I am an insomniac."
38. "My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel."
39. "There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons."
40. "What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment."
41. "There isn't a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don't know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap."
42. "I don't think there's a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don't think of it as being class literature."
43. "In high school I dated a white woman. She would come to visit me on the rez. And her dad, who was very racist, didn't like that at all. And he told her one time, 'You shouldn't go on the rez if you're white because Indians have a lot of anger in their heart.'"
44. "Certainly I'm angry at the way Indians have been treated and continue to be treated. But I don't think it's a helpless emotion."
45. "My father is an amazing man."
46. "I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators."
47. "Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy."
48. "A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature."
49. "Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community." (Meaning)
50. "If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing." (Meaning)
51. "You have to love somebody that much to also hate them that much, too" (Meaning)
52. "When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing." (Meaning)
53. "One play can change your momentum forever." (Meaning)
54. "We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye." (Meaning)
55. "I drew because words were too unpredictable." (Meaning)
56. "I think I was born with a suitcase." (Meaning)
― Sherman Alexie Quotes
* Want to explore more inspiring quotes and their meanings? Head over to this quotes page and discover a treasure trove of motivational phrases.
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
